Throughout this specification the use of the word “inventor” in singular form may be taken as reference to one (singular) or all (plural) inventors of the present invention. The inventor has identified the following related art.
Computer networks are in use in almost every aspect of home and business life. The same may be considered to apply for communication networks, in general. Accordingly, communication network traffic generally has been the subject of substantial discussion. Many products have been developed that may monitor network traffic and the flow of traffic past a given point in a computer network. With rapid advances in mobile phone and portable computing device technology, network traffic has now become somewhat ubiquitous, which only serves to increase the burden of monitoring such traffic.
Online services such as the Microsoft® Network offer facilities for multiple users to simultaneously chat with each other in real-time. Generally, a chat room may be provided to members of the service for remote discussion on a particular topic of interest. Owing to the relative anonymity of the participants, chat room conversations may often get out of hand, become off-topic, offensive and even create possible legal issues for the online service provider as a result. To deal with such improper use, online services may hire employees to monitor chat room conversations. In the event of the chat room conversation involving improper dialogue, the manual monitoring process may further involve providing alerts to users at either end of the conversation to act as warnings for the detection of unacceptable content within the chat session that has been manually monitored. Determining what exactly may be unacceptable content may accordingly require substantial intervention by a human being. As a result, to effectively monitor what is taking place in the chat room, each chat room requires an active and dedicated monitor at virtually all times. Moreover, it is difficult to attain reliable and consistent record of terms used in a conversation that may be considered unacceptable or, furthermore, become recognised as unacceptable in time or over time. As would be recognised by the person skilled in the art, this may be expensive in terms of manpower and may also lead to errors which can alienate users or subscribers.
As an example of the problems faced with modern communications, the growing popularity of the internet increases a parent's desire to locate safe and fun websites for their children's use. Parents naturally want to prevent their children from using websites that link to undesirable content (pornography, violence, etc.). Likewise, parents also wish to prevent their children from interacting with strangers in an online chat room or discussion group. Previous attempts to limit children's access to the internet have mostly involved software programs like Surfwatch™ or Net Nanny™. These programs have allowed a child to freely browse the World Wide Web, but have blocked access to prohibited websites that are listed in prohibited site libraries that are updated periodically. These methods are directed to determination of sites that may be visited and rely on the listing of the prohibited sites. Accordingly, they do not determine an exchange of undesirable conversation or content per se. These methods work adequately for screening undesirable content based on a determination of prohibited sites, but do nothing to provide high quality, safe communication sessions for vulnerable users.
In a slightly different application, a method may be to scan a document for words on a “hit list” of unacceptable words, and deny access to those documents containing a word on the hit list. This technique for identifying inappropriate documents may screen or deny access to numerous acceptable documents whilst web surfing, for example. For instance, if the word “breast” is on the list, then the software would deny access to documents describing cooking recipes for chicken breast or for medical documents on such important issues as breast cancer. In this way the use of word based lists as a tool may often screen out useful educational information.
Businesses are often interested in limiting not only what employees cannot access but also limiting what they can access. For this reason, businesses may use firewall software that would prevent their employees from accessing any Internet sites except those specifically sanctioned or on an approved list. However, such techniques may be counterproductive because the employee may be limited from accessing a work-related site that is not on the approved list, such as a site linked to or mentioned from a site on the approved list.
In U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/606,517 (Borden et al), filed 25 Jun. 2003 and published under publication No 2004/0111479 on 10 Jun. 2004, there is disclosed a system and method for online monitoring of and interaction with chat and instant messaging participants. The method and system of Borden involves a complex and diverse determination of a monitoring event where a monitoring event comprises a combined or simultaneous existence of certain defined factors associated with a particular exchange relating to, the exchange's participants, content of the exchange, recent history, and/or the tone of exchange or conversation. On line communications are monitored and input to a number of pattern recognising modules working in parallel. The pattern recognition modules use known pattern recognition techniques available at the time of Borden's filing such as, a generic word finder using a stored dictionary of words, Natural Language Parsers implementing stochastic methods such as hidden Markov models to tag words, Bayesian filters and neural network filters. The outputs of the pattern recognisers are then correlated using Artificial Intelligence techniques to determine state variables on which decisions may be made to alert persons to the determined monitoring event based on decision algorithms. The inventor has recognised that the system of Borden may be inefficient in as much as it does not readily differentiate between communications that may be deemed to be “safe” or otherwise for the conversation participant and communication traffic that is unverified or uncontrolled. Furthermore, use of high level AI or Machine Learning algorithms as proposed by Borden et al may create bottlenecks due to the high level of computational complexity. Since Borden's system uses rules that over time can change, the system is potentially always learning and therefore may be prone to inaccuracies from time to time. Effectively, the system proposed by Borden needs to learn prior to being accurate and then it needs to continue to learn. Chat room data, for example, may have ever moving states. Using Borden's techniques eventually may lead to high levels of complexity which can ultimately categorise data incorrectly.
It would be desirable to provide a system for monitoring electronic communications that was not reliant on complex AI or Machine Learning paradigms which require a high order of complexity.
Any discussion of documents, devices, acts or knowledge in this specification is included to explain the context of the invention. It should not be taken as an admission that any of the material forms a part of the prior art base or the common general knowledge in the relevant art in Australia or elsewhere on or before the priority date of the disclosure and claims herein.
An object of the present invention is to at least provide a useful alternative to the related art.
A further object of the present invention is to alleviate at least one disadvantage associated with the related art.